Saturday, April 6, 2013

On the Air: LazyTown (2004)

With NBC's Saturday lineup now programmed by PBS Kids Sprout, along comes LazyTown, making its return to Saturday mornings to encourage kids to be active. No, really.

LazyTown was developed in Iceland (!), and thus is the first series from that country to be imported to the US. The series originally aired here on Nickelodeon, which eventually outsourced the series to CBS for a year or two. Two years ago, PBS acquired the series, and had been running it on its Sprout channel (not available in all areas; check your listings). When they took over programming NBC's Saturday morning lineup from Qubo, it made sense to bring LazyTown along.

LazyTown only employs a small group of human actors. The rest are puppets. Sportacus is the town's resident hero and athletic maven. Stephanie is the mayor's niece. Robbie Rotten, as his name implies, is the villain, who'd prefer the city of LazyTown to revert back to being dull, boring, and slothful, and would do anything to get the better of Sportacus. Unfortunately, he never succeeds, and even if he did, his plot is abruptly undone, usually thanks to Stephanie.

Following is the series opener:

Now, you can't expect your kids to suddenly run & jump like Sportacus, but you know what they say, practice is perfect.